Given that whites are a rapidly shrinking portion of the population, the Republican Party stands no chance of long-term success unless it can radically change these numbers. Personally, I’m most surprised at the Asian-American numbers. I would have thought that Asian-Americans, with a history of hard work and little history of dependence on government would be an ideal recruiting ground for Republicans. Yet the vast majority of Asian-Americans have rejected the Republican Party. Why? And what can be done about it?

I asked a similar question once before, and it led to a very interesting discussion about the history of the party — A Republican freed the slaves, MLK was a Republican until the Goldwater candidacy, etc. However, I believe the general public is not much interested in history. We live in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world. What can Republicans offer, going forward, that all racial groups, especially Asian-Americans, are likely to embrace?

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If the general public are not much interested in history, then that makes it damned difficult to know what to do. With particular regard to the black vote, the republicans have better than a century of treating them as actual human beings born with something inside their skulls, while the democrats have absolutely nothing to recommend them – yet the black vote goes democrat every time. I don’t know what you do about it when you have a population that evidences no interest whatsoever in the real history that happened in the real world. How the hell do you approach that? You can’t tell them the truth: you’ve been telling them the truth for a hundred years, and they stand there with their fingers in their ears going “la-la-la – can’t hear you.” How they can – as a population! – manage to so resolutely ignore what’s really happened and continue to buy snake-oil by the gallon is beyond me. It’s behavior so illogical, so flatly wrong, that it’s not at all surprising the republicans don’t know how to address it. How do you address willful idiocy on this scale? If they’re not going to accept that the sun rises in the east, what the hell is anybody supposed to do about that?

What can the republicans offer going forward? What the hell are they supposed to offer? If logic, adherence to founding principles, and fiscally responsible government that tends to leave individuals alone aren’t enough, then I can’t help you – and maybe you don’t deserve to be helped. If our black, Hispanic, and Asian brethren are determined to piss it away, then away it’ll go.

But there is something wrong, a bit of a disconnect somewhere in those numbers. I may not entirely believe those numbers. More people self-identify as republican than democrat, and a fair amount more people self-identify as conservative than liberal. So obviously there’s something a little screwy with these numbers.

http://bigfoodetc.blogspot.com Marica

“If logic, adherence to founding principles, and fiscally responsible government that tends to leave individuals alone aren’t enough, then I can’t help you – and maybe you don’t deserve to be helped.”

Ummm… . This is not how I would characterize the Republican party. It is certainly not how I would characterize my Republican senators, or representative. It’s not how I would characterize my Republican governor or the former governor (Haley Barbour). I could go on. And bare in mind that I am about as conservative as is possible.

Maybe that’s the problem. What do you think?

Charles Martel

A lot of the “I can’t hear you!” is from the GOP. When the party decides to support the candidacies of fully balled men and women, and not the herd of RINOs it so devotedly tends to now, I’ll support it. Echoing Marica, I’m a conservative, not a damned kinder, gentler enabler.

As for the self-defeating obduracy of the majority of black Americans, we should celebrate. They obviously are now fully vested members of that great national community H.L. Mencken so memorably referred to in, “Nobody ever went bankrupt underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

riw777

So long as the entire mess is billed as “reasonable people who care,” verses “unreasonable people who don’t care,” it won’t matter what policies either side supports. The biggest cover the media gives to the Democratic Party is that Democrats are reasonable, likeable, and that they really, really care about you. I suspect this has as much to do with the desire to self-justify as it does with a conscious choice to actually cover things this way.

http://ruminationsroom.wordpress.com Don Quixote

jj — I don’t know about self-identification, but more people register Democrat than Republican. And more people self-identify as moderate than as conservative or liberal. It’s probably fair to say that (with the exception of black conservatives) most conservatives support Republicans and most liberals support Democrats. The problem is that the Democrats are winning the battle for the hearts/minds/votes of the moderates.

The question then becomes, how do the Republicans attract/persuade the moderates. Marcia and CM suggest that they should provide an even more conservative (but persumably more coherent) alternative to the Democrats. That strikes me as counter-intuitive. If moderates won’t support a watered-down version of conservativism, why would they support a more extreme version? What do you all think?

riw777

“If moderates won’t support a watered-down version of conservativism, why would they support a more extreme version?”
I tend to think people would support conservatives –but they won’t, because there aren’t any to support, really. When you’re given the choice between two visions of the future that are essentially the same, you’re going to choose the one that gets you more stuff. If you’re given two different visions, then you really have to think and choose.
So long as the media allows the actual message of a real alternative to get out. Conversation is a lost art in this world –to disagree is to express hate in the modern liberal mindset. When saying, “I don’t want homosexuals in leadership positions in my organization,” is the equivalent of bigotry and hatred, there’s no discussion other than who can come up with the most emotionally charged names.

jj

DQ -I don’t know where you get your numbers, but Gallup says conservatives fairly broadly outnumber liberals, nationally. Yes, those who self-identify as “moderate” do outnumber both those who self-identify as “conservative” and “liberal,” but the question didn’t have to do with those who blow in the wind. I also read in a number of places that republican registration is on a par with or slightly ahead of democrat registration – again, nationally. (Though again, both are losing membership to the independent line.)

I chose the example of the black resistance to reality to illustrate the problem that republicans, or conservatives, or Zoroastrians – or anybody but a liberal – will have convincing that particular community that, as noted, the sun rises in the east. The historical facts do not align in such a way as to grant black favor to democrats, but they have it anyway. Therefore we must conclude that history and logic do not apply. So the question becomes what is there to be done when neither history nor logic apply? What you do about that is one of humanity’s great unknowns. Even Sigmund Freud was reduced to rather plaintively asking What Do Women Want? when a lifetime’s research left him with nothing. (Do you really suspect I don’t know you don’t like that, ladies? No need to tell me about it.) How to address illogic is an ancient question.

Marcia – it is how I would characterize republicans in comparison to democrats. This is a comparative exercise, and while the republicans are all too often not very well aligned with such principles, certainly the worst republican is better than the best democrat. No, the republicans are in themselves not perfect. But yes, they are a whole hell of a lot better than the democrats, who don’t even pretend to understand the founding ethos of the nation.

I would celebrate, Charles, except we let them vote. There are a lot of them. They cancel you and me out. In fact, I happen to know that your vote has been specifically nullified by some dingbat Jay Leno interviewed out on the street who didn’t know who Joe Biden is, and was furthermore unable to identify a single member of the supreme court or his/her own representative in congress. Aren’t you glad you got out of bed to go vote? Funnily enough, I don’t feel really swell about that.

SADIE

I think the following is the best explanation I’ve read to date. Be sure to go to the Townhall link [Full Analysis].

How can a country that elected Ronald Reagan have Obama tied in the polls with Mitt Romney? The answer is: It’s not the same country. [...] The same process that has already destroyed California is working its way through the entire country.

Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act was expressly designed to change the ethnic composition of America to make it more like Nigeria, considered more susceptible to liberal demagogues.
Since 1965, instead of taking immigrants that replicate the country’s existing ethnic mix, we’ve been admitting mostly immigrants from the Third World. At the same time, people from the countries that sent immigrants to this country for its first several centuries have been barred.
Eighty-five percent of immigrants now come from “developing countries.” (How are they ever going to develop if their people are all on the dole over here?)
The “browning of America” is not a natural process. It’s been artificially imposed by Democrats who are confident of their abilities to turn Third World immigrants into government patrons. [Full Analysis]

Charles Martel

“Marcia and CM suggest that they should provide an even more conservative (but presumably more coherent) alternative to the Democrats. That strikes me as counter-intuitive. If moderates won’t support a watered-down version of conservatism, why would they support a more extreme version?”

What seems counter-intuitive to me—and riw777 touches on it well—is insisting that yelling “Me, too!” more loudly and insistently to moderates will work in our favor. We’ve been doing it for years and somehow Obama got elected.

I also think that using the word “extreme” to describe honest and coherent conservative positions is buying into the left’s vocabulary. Our job is start untangling the left’s Newspeak, and to deride, as John Sununu has shown so well, the pretense that the left’s labels and gobbledygook are coherent thought.

http://bigfoodetc.blogspot.com Marica

“I also think that using the word “extreme” to describe honest and coherent conservative positions is buying into the left’s vocabulary. Our job is start untangling the left’s Newspeak, and to deride, as John Sununu has shown so well, the pretense that the left’s labels and gobbledygook are coherent thought.”

Hey folks, it’s Mar-i-ca.

I’m with CM. This isn’t well thought out but my view is that the way to move people in an argument is to take the most extreme (sorry, Charles, it’s the right word here) position you can comfortably, logically argue from and push that line. You may not move your “opponent” to your extreme position, but you may pull him in your direction.

This is a tactic that works. Ask Ron Paul.

Danny Lemieux

I think that a fundamental problem, building on what the commentators here have touched upon, is that conservatives and Republicans find it generally abhorrent to put people into boxes defined by their skin color, ethnicity, gender, sexual preferences, etc.). The Democrat Left, true to big-city ward politics, has done a very effective job of defining people into voting blocs, pitting them against one another, and then giving them “stuff” (i.e. other peoples’ money) in exchange for their votes. I recall Condi Rice recently saying that she was grateful for the Republican party seeing her as a person first, not just as a black person.

One of the problems that conservatives have reaching out to the “black community”, for example, is that it always boils down to a question of “what are you going to do for us, the black community?” The proper answer should be, “we are all one community”, but that doesn’t buy votes.

Many but not nearly enough people have caught on to what is going on. We need to develop a spokesman and a message that can go to all these different groups and say, “we are all people, we are all Americans…first!”. We just haven’t found that person yet.

http://ruminationsroom.wordpress.com Don Quixote

Marica — Sorry about screwing up your name. I’ll try to get it right from now on.

Danny, I think the problem is that so many Americans, especially minority Americans (who identify with their minority group first) and liberal whites (who identify with liberalism and, perhaps, internationalism first), do not believe that we are all Americans first. Even if we find the best ever speaker to deliver the message, how can we persuade people that the message is true?

http://bigfoodetc.blogspot.com Marica

DQ: It’s the first time that’s ever happened! No prob.

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

There’s a huge image problem conservatives and Republicans have yet to notice and thus have not fixed. Something that extends even to oversea perceptions.

Danny Lemieux

I’ve noticed a funny thing when I go overseas, DQ. When Americans greet each other in foreign lands, all other differences tend to disappear and they do feel like “Americans”. Hate to say it, but perhaps nothing will change until we are confronted with an existential threat that forces us to focus on our commonalities. I suspect that such a threat is not far away.

http://OgBlog.net Earl

jj, 7:
“…certainly the worst republican is better than the best democrat.”

Nope. I lived in Tennessee when Phil Bredesen, D was governor, and I would have voted for him for President over John McCain in a heartbeat. He stopped the Dems in the legislature from passing an income tax over and over. A good man who was clear about his positions, stuck by them, and defended them ably.

Danny, 11:
“We need to develop a spokesman and a message that can go to all these different groups and say, “we are all people, we are all Americans…first!”. We just haven’t found that person yet.”

I’m not in love with Mitt, but credit where credit is due. He went and spoke to the NAACP and did not pander. His message was roughly what you are asking for, here. So just maybe we have “that person” as our candidate this year. We can hope.

Martel, 3:
“When the party decides to support the candidacies of fully balled men and women, and not the herd of RINOs it so devotedly tends to now, I’ll support it.”

How do I agree with thee? Let me count the ways…..!

jj

The basic answer to the question is there’s nothing the republicans can do. People in this country do not read, they mostly slept through school – though that was probably a good thing – they have no interest in educating themselves, and there is no intellectual curiosity in any direction. Therefore, in order to know what day it is they are dependent on the media. And we have a media that has a very plainly apparent and clear bias, and has yet – for example – to ask the most basic questions of Obama. (“Gee, Prez, your ID card from Columbia is readily available, anybody who looks for it can find it – how come it says ‘foreign student’ across the bottom in purple? I know Columbia’s chock-a-block with nitwits, but do they actually think Hawaii’s ‘foreign?'”) There is no chance the media will ever report history honestly, or republican positions honestly, or democrat insanity honestly.

So you’re right: the republican party is spiraling around the drain and there isn’t – in the real world – a damn thing they can do about it. The only way to get anybody’s attention is to utilize the media, and the media won’t be utilized except by democrats. Finito. There is no prospect of long-term survival for a right-of-center party.

http://photoncourier.blogspot.com David Foster

Need to also consider geography in the mix. I believe a lot of Asians live in the SF area, for instance, and you’d have to be very emotionally tough (like Book!) to live there and not become a leftist zombie.

We should also discuss what, if anything, can be done to detach unmarried women, particularly young ones, from Dem affiliation.

SADIE

We should also discuss what, if anything, can be done to detach unmarried women, particularly young ones, from Dem affiliation.

Throw into the topic NBMs (never been married), will probably not bother, will have more kids, more fathers than the original Founding Fathers and consider everything between their legs “The Land of Opportunity”…did I miss anything? The Feds are in the sex trade business – stay single, have babies, get paid by the Big Sugar Daddy and vote the Big “D” and he’ll let you keep your humble home, give you money for food, clothes, alcohol and cigarettes – just keep turning tricks and turn those tricks into future Democrats. The ‘pimps’ don’t take kindly when outsiders mess with their ‘girls’.

Charles Martel

Ditzhood among young women is not limited to just the unmarried. A few years ago I worked with an very intelligent young editor who has just been married. One day she lamented about how difficult it had been for her and her new husband to find the time to go on a proper honeymoon. “Why doesn’t George Bush [this was 2006] do something so that people in our position can go off for awhile after they get married?”

I was so flabbergasted at the ignorance and sense of entitlement in that one sentence that I didn’t even try to set her straight.

By the way, she was graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, one of America’s great citadels of proper training in the techniques and ethics (=wink= =wink=) of the “profession” of journalism. Man, those geniuses at Medill sure turned out one informed deep thinker!

Gringo

Perhaps one consequence of the election of the first black President in 2008 was that 2010 saw a number of black Republicans running for Congress. Allen West is one successful example.

http://OgBlog.net Earl

Hey Gringo – and all – speaking of Allen West, here’s the e-mail I just got from BAMPAC:

Dear Patriot,
Congressman Allen West is in the fight of his life and he needs our help. Liberal Republicans and liberal Democrats have teamed up to defeat America’s best Congressman. Will please make a special generous contribution of $35, $50, $100, $250 or more to help reelect Congressman Allen West?
Here is what Allen is up against:
The liberal GOP establishment first redrew Allen’s district to make it more liberal.
These same liberals then recruited a left-wing “Republican in Name Only” to run against him in the primary.
Then, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama made Allen their number one target for defeat in the House of Representatives this year and recruited a tough, well-funded Democrat opponent.
Bill Maher, the “comedian” who is one of Barack Obama’s biggest donors, is even getting involved. He just called Congressman Allan West an APE!Now both the RINOs and every crazy left-wing group in America are gunning for Allen West.
That’s why BAMPAC is going all out to support our good friend. We are going to pay for phone banks, ads, mailings and whatever Allan needs in order to make sure he wins this primary and gets reelected this fall.
However, I need your help. And I need it now.
Allen’s primary is just weeks away and the Republican establishment would love to get him out of Congress.Please click here to make the most generous contribution you can to help reelect Allen West.
No other incumbent conservative congressman is facing this kind of opposition. He is fighting both the liberal Republicans and the liberal Democrats! At the same time!
Allen would probably refer to this as a two front war. And I’m sure he’s relishing this fight.
However, he can’t win both the primary and the general election against such opposition without help.
And that is where BAMPAC comes in. BAMPAC is one of the top 25 PACs in the country. We provide the funding and other campaign support that conservative candidates need. Especially when they are under attack.We ONLY support REAL conservatives.
And Allen West is about as real as they come.
That’s why both the Republican political establishment and Barack Obama want him gone.
And they are doing everything they possibly can to defeat this brave man.Please help Congressman West.Make the most generous contribution you possibly can to BAMPAC’s campaign to support Allen West
But please act quickly. Allen is fighting a nasty RINO opponent in his primary and we have to help him now.
Sincerely,
Alvin Williams
President and CEO

Danny Lemieux

Charles M, was this young lady’s name Peggy Joseph by any chance?

SADIE

Danny and Charles – It wasn’t Peggy, but it may have been someone from Code Pink. I just couldn’t resist sharing this. I’ll be damned how you can leave home without “it”. Bring your Vagina to the RNC — CodePink.org

“My vagina’s furious and it needs to talk.” Our vaginas need to talk, too. They need to talk about the way women’s rights are threatened worldwide–from anti-choice legislation to inappropriate rape jokes to economic inequality to war and occupation overseas that disproportionately affect women’s lives.Join CODEPINK and V-Day to bring your vagina to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL August 27-30!
Together, we will bring our resilient, creative, powerful vaginas to Republican fundraisers and to the convention hall. We’ll also take part in the Coalition March on the RNC and other peace and justice actions.

Ron19

Earl 22:

Deja Vu.

Two years ago conservative Republican Sharon Angel won the primary against the choice of the Republican National Senatorial Committee.

For such an egregious sin, the RNSC delayed and delayed supplying her with money for her campaign in the general election.

As a result, she lost to HARRY REID, who had been in trouble for getting re-elected!

Thank you, Republican National Senatorial Committee.

Charles Martel

“Together, we will bring our resilient, creative, powerful vaginas to Republican fundraisers and to the convention hall.”

Madam, I knew Resilient Vagina. I worked with Resilient Vagina. Resilient Vagina was a friend of mine. You, Missy, are no resilient Vagina.

Danny Lemieux

Hammer, I can think of a lot of adjectives that might apply to her vagina. “Resilient” is not one of them.